Backlash over the bills has prompted LIPA to respond with efforts such as suspending late payment fees, allowing partial payments and offering to read meters, according to Newsday.

“To get this message on Thanksgiving was crass and classless. It’s just heartless,” Michael Hilferty, 29, an attorney from Long Beach told the New York Post. He got his bill via e-mail on Thanksgiving and despite being forced from his powerless home for weeks, his bill was a dollar more than the previous month.

LIPA spokesperson Elizabeth Flagler assured customers on Monday that the bills they were receiving would be adjusted next month when technicians are able to get actual meter readings, adding that the bills were “based on the estimated reading of (their) energy use from the same month the year before.”

LIPA is rushing to respond to the outrage expressed by some Long Island residents who went weeks without electricity after Hurricane Sandy and have now been jolted by power bills as high as they'd be on a typical month.